AIBU to wonder WTF has happened to nursing “care” in our NHS?

[AnnieGetYourPun]

And don’t tell me it’s all Covid/staff shortages/staff illness related.

My niece was eventually admitted to hospital after being sent home twice from A&E (in agony) and is now on a gynae ward. It’s just her and an elderly lady on the ward. The elderly lady was getting agitated as she needed the toilet. The nurse came and said, and I quote “it’s alright, use your pad and we’ll come and sort you out later”. This has really upset my niece who’s dodging sepsis now, on the ward, on massive IV antibiotics/anti-emetics and IV analgesia. She has narrowly avoided a ruptured uterus as there was no one to do a scan on her, after a 12 hr wait in A&E. She is 32.

Nurses now... all of ‘em have degrees. All dead clever. Very few of them have an ounce of “caring” in them.

Fry me on here. I’m past fucking caring.

Should add. I trained in the NHS. Was a student/junior staff nurse/senior staff nurse/junior sister and G grade senior sister before retirement. Never, in my f***g life have I seen such lack of basic care and maintenance of human dignity than I have witnessed in NHS hospitals, in the past two years.

Shove your clapping and rainbows.

Can only speak for the treatment I received when I was an anxious sobbing uncontrollable mess and they were great. I'm not one for tipping the mailman at Christmas etc but when I was released from A+E I sought them out specially to thank them

I’ve had amazing care during covid for me and my family, I think due to non covid wards being a lot quieter. I think most people have had some awful experiences with nurses and some wonderful ones. I think it can attract some very dark characters as well as some who’s care and selflessness can be, in the truest sense, amazing.

I agree 100% when it's women's health and gyane related it's disgusting. I've been in a&e many times with my chronic condition and the utter contempt for me is just awful, I'm at my weakest, vomiting in pain and they treat me like I'm wasting their time. Funny enough it's listed a one of the top 20 most painful conditions by the NHS, so god help anyone with the other 19 conditions, be lucky to be given morphine.

I ended up paying for my surgery privately during covid and guess what, some of the nurses in a London private hospital were equally rude.

Maternity ward was awful, I was bleeding out of the floor, and they basically told me off for making a mess.

We've had a few good nurses over the year but the bad outweigh the good.

The only poor care I have had in hospital was by a nurse who was would continually mention she had been a nurse for nearly 40 years and was thoroughly unpleasant to the younger nurses on the ward, yet her maths skills were so poor she couldn’t work out the percentage of mass I had lost during my stay. Someone with poor maths skills is not safe to be a nurse.

Apart from her all of the care I have had from nurses has been fantastic. When I had a wound that wouldn’t heal I was completely bed bound for the first week and my care was fantastic, it remained fantastic when I was able to be more independent. A few weeks ago I had a short stay due to covid, again my care was very good.

My son had a stay a few years ago due to sepsis, the nurses were brilliant with him, the other children on the ward and the parents.

Annie, you are calling all nurses and presumably HCA assistants bad horrible people based on your mums experience. I gather your mother had a bowel motion when staff members serving out dinner/ giving medication and wasn’t cleaned up straight away. As a former nurse you should know this is the worst time to for ward staff as they are trying to serve food and deliver medication at the same time.

YANBU. When I last left hospital I felt genuinely worried for elderly patients and how on earth they would be faring. It was bad enough for me trying to get just basic care (food, water and toilet.... let alone washing. No one mentioned helping me to shower and it seemed to me to be very low on the list of priorities so I went without). I felt so concerned for the elderly patients I 'left behind' who I am quite sure were hungry and dehydrated, not to mention afraid and alone.

I've had awful awful care from the NHS in general. Rude nurses, giggling midwives, rude consultants and one nurse lost me my tube in an ectopic pregnancy along with the sonographers. Then had an awful birth, complained only for my notes to disappear...

All nurses I know are incredibly caring, work their socks off, stay long hours overtime and get paid peanuts. I have nothing, nothing! But admiration and respect for decent, hard working a
Caring care staff. This is my experience though. But your sweeping generalisation is awful.

Also our room of 8 beds didn't get cleaned the whole 10 days I was there, apart from one brief sweep. Not even a mop!

My husband was hospitalised for over a month a few years ago. He was at death’s door for several days. The majority of the nursing staff and care assistants were outstanding. A small minority clearly didn’t want to be there. I looked one of them in the eye one day after having to clean my husband again because they had done such a bad job he had developed effectively nappy rash and said “ you really don’t care very much, do you”. She shrugged and walked away.
Like all professions, there are good and bad but my experience was overwhelmingly good.

The head of critical care, only in retrospect did I think about the pressure on him and the demands on his time, sat and held my hand and talked to me for nearly an hour one early morning when I was in despair deeper than I could ever have imagined. He asked me if there was anything practical at all that he could do to help me.
My husband was hooked up to a catheter, a fluid drip and IV medication lines that were all too short. He was fitting and rocking side to side, unconscious, for several days and they kept being torn out despite my trying to steady him night after night. I had mentioned it to several people but nothing had been done. I told him and he left, came back with the necessary equipment, got down on his knees and changed them all. He could so easily have instructed a nurse but he did it himself, so gently, talking so kindly to me the whole time. He said that many of his colleagues who were “far brighter than me” were doing all they could to identify what was wrong with my husband. He told me he was “the doer, the practical one” and was very happy to do it.
I (and subsequently my recovered husband when I told him about it) will never forget that wonderful man.

Oh gosh. Thought I was over it all but I’m blubbing a bit now.

The data driven culture has a lot to answer for rather than nurses. I’ve been in hospital a few times over the last couple of years due to kidney disease. I usually get admitted at night. The routine is to transfer you to an admission ward where they go through a full admission at whatever time - I understand asking about allergies but do they really need to know what pets I have at 4am and have had no sleep. To then be woken at 6 am to ask me to score my pain level. If I say a high number it’s recorded on their iPad but no pain relief is offered. The common sense and nursing care has been booted for the sake of management and protocols. This is not the fault of nurses, though it can be frustrating when you are at the receiving end.

Agree. I come from a nursing family and was horrified by the lack of basic care my father in law received while in hospital. The ward was filthy too.

This is a really sad thread. I'm so sorry to everyone who has experienced bad care, it is completely unacceptable and should be spoken about.

I'm a nurse and thankfully 99% of the time work with wonderful, compassionate nurses who would never do any of the poor care mentioned on this thread.

But I have worked with lazy, neglectful nurses/HCA's occasionally whose standards of care, you couldn't even call care. Just last week I made a complaint about a HCA who is now under investigation.

From my experience it is surprisingly difficult to get struck off from the nursing register. I have witnessed awful care by a nurse who had been sent to my ward who had been supernumary for THREE YEARS, because she was not capable of caring for patients on her own. She was neglectful, rude and the things she would say to patients were disgusting. It took a year to get her struck off despite hundreds of complaints, and it was the third trust she had worked for.

Bad care happens, but a lot of good care does too. I would encourage anyone to speak up about their concerns, as nothing will change, and no one will learn if no one reports it!

It baffles me why the we have the NHS on some kind of pedestal made even more apparent by the clapping nonsense and all the teary posts from NHS staff about people clearing shelves bulk buying at the start of the pandemic to tik tok dances on the wards?? No wonder hygiene is failing, phones on wards, staff outside in full uniform smoking, contract cleaners. Standards have slipped and some and I stress some think that because they have a degree they are above reproach.

I've not had great experience working with the NHS or being a patient. I won't be spoken to like I'm insignificant but the way I've been spoken to and treated has been horrific in a quite a few cases.
If you don't like you're job and feel you can't give it the best you can then leave its that simple but it's a good number with pensions and paid sick leave.

I nearly lost my life in 2019. It was scary as hell. I was brought back from death because a nurse cared enough to check on me and keep me talking. I was bathed, fed, intubated, canulad, dressed and undressed every day by nurses. I was given 8 blood transfusions by nurses who noticed the subtle signs that my condition had changed when a consultant hadn't. I owe them my life quite literally.

@anniegetyourpun no. My comment says stop tarring us all with the same brush. Thats what I wrote and thats what I mean. Hope my university education isnt getting in the way of you understanding me.

There are lots of wonderful nurses. There are also shit ones.

Unfortunately, I think the state of the NHS means the caring ones are more likely to leave the professional - mainly upset they don't get the chance to do any caring.

I don't think it's fair to tarnish people based on their qualifications. My mums an old school nurse, very caring but has worked with some really nasty cows before who didn't have degrees and still weren't caring.

Unfortunately nursing is undervalued and underpaid in the UK and therefore they don't have pick of the bunch. It's also easy to get burned out.

I hope your niece recovers well.

From my experience it is surprisingly difficult to get struck off from the nursing register. I agree with this. Those nurses who do deliver poor care are often allowed to continue, but, ITS NOT EVERY SINGLE NURSE.

You are SO unreasonable to say ALL nurses are awful.

@Daphnise

Like many things there is great variation- some nurses are very good, and quite a few are lazy and dismissive.

There's a lot of hiding at a desk, fiddling with a computer screen, while patients lie neglected.

Poor communication, with the patient and relatives, and other medical staff is also the norm.

They are not angels, just people doing a job- some much better than others.

This.

I’ve had shit nursing care via the nhs and excellent.

I had a burst appendix years ago and had excellent care for my entire 6 weeks.

I had an absolute bitch of a nurse after a miscarriage and huge difficult mc and care in hospital was awful. I was left in my own excrement and had huge bleeding through pads and soaking through the sheets and she left me in my own crap and blood. When my mother arrived and hit the roof - she told my mother she wasn’t a cleaner - sadly for her she had met her match - and the shit hit the fan. Mother started filming it all - the nurse was a female A grade bitch though I feared for my safety when my mother left and left much earlier than I should of to escape her. She was a bitch though and refused me my painkillers and all sorts saying she was ‘too busy’ when I dragged myself down to the nurses station with iv drips and all she was watching a film.

If you whiteness or experience poor care I urge you to report it or make a complaint at the time. Please don’t come on here generalising everything you’ve seen over a period of years and then say non of us are caring, compassionate or maintaining patient dignity.

How long ago did you retire @AnnieGetYourPun?

I was in for a broken coccyx a month ago and on a non covid Ward

A&E staff were incredible, particularly the HCA that looked after be while I was there (I have GAD and PTSD so I was a bit of a shakey crying mess and when he left me on the Ward I cried so hard because he really was just so bloody brilliant). Nurses on the ward 99% lovely, even stopped for the odd chat to distract me from the burning pain in my spine despite I expect being very busy

I have also had some shit nurses previously on maternity years ago but overall ive never had a shock horror moment with an NHS staff member.

@stairway... No, I’m sorry, you’ve misunderstood me. It was the lady sharing the ward with my niece today who asked to go to the toilet. She did have a bowel movement in her pad and four hours later, when food was brought, my niece said that she absolutely could not eat anything with the smell in the room. At this point, my niece was moved into a side room and the lady washed and cleaned.

Some people on here seem to think I’m “jealous” of nurses with degrees. I am not. I had an excellent career in the nhs and came out as a G Grade Sister.

The death of my mum caused our family to make a complaint. That was Oct 2019. We STILL haven’t had a reply. The hospital reply went to the CCG and we, as of Feb 2021 have not been able to access it. It is ongoing. What really distressed me was the falsifying of medical notes; legal documents. Tick charts for care “All Dignity Maintained” was often used. It was not true.

However, sadly it’s not all about my mum. Other family members and friends have had dreadful experiences too. A friend who had septicaemia and lost large portion of his leg and backside. His elderly parents were called in as they though he was at end of life. He survived, just. The hospital settled for negligence compensation out of court, 3 yrs ago.

I visited my 92yr old uncle in hospital in February last year. I took one look at his hands bandaged in foam and asked why he was being restrained (he couldn’t pick up his drink and EPA’s clearly dehydrated) only to be told “he keeps trying to remove his catheter”. He had a rip roaring urine infection and must have been in agony. No wonder he was trying to remove his catheter.

A neighbours’ mum who’d fallen and broken her hip on the ward trying to get to the toilet having waited so long, she thought she’d “give it a go”.

There are more. I could go on.

People who are overly defensive of their work/profession and cannot look objectively at a situation scare me. It’s how excuses pervade.

Hmm it’s a difficult one. Some of my best friends are nurses and it’s quite common for them to miss their breaks, not have anything to eat on a 13 hour shift and finish much later than they are meant to because they are so busy and the wards are so understaffed. Sadly a few of them have left the NHS now.

On the other hand I have seen poor care. When my husband was in hospital I saw the sitting around gossiping and bitching about patients in ear shot of other patients. I’ve seen some upsetting things on the geriatric wards and patients spoken to in a horrible manner. Patients being told to do their business and it will be cleaned up later is not uncommon unfortunately.

On the other hand I think the public can be just as rude to medical staff. People expect and demand more from the NHS than it has the resources for. Nurses do have to do a lot of paperwork so will you find them sat at the nursing bay or at a computer.